| Victor R. Johnson, Jr., P.E. | |
The hazardous waste management engineering discipline encompasses a number of related fields of engineering and is complimentary to other disciplines offered by ELA: | |
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| Regulatory Activities Waste management is not a new activity for the U.S. There have been a large number of laws, regulations, ordinances, etc., about solid and hazardous waste management over the years. Waste management terminology has correspondingly changed over time to reflect the state of waste management at the time of the new law, regulation, ordinance, etc. The Federal Government passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976. It was the latest Federal update on solid and hazardous waste management. The implementing regulations should have quickly followed. They did not. The reason for their four-year delay was the complexity of developing regulations that were fair to the diverse stakeholder community while still meeting the intent of the law. As the time dragged on past 1976 without the enabling RCRA regulations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) became concerned about assuring enough disposal capacity for commerce in the U.S. In 1979, they published "Siting of Hazardous Waste Management Facilities and Public Opposition," SW809, Washington, D.C. November 1979. The EPA felt that the major difficulty in ensuring present and future hazardous waste disposal capacity was public opposition to the local siting of a disposal facility. Past negative publicity on hazardous waste landfills had increased the opposition to new disposal sites. A 1980 public opinion survey regarding waste management facilities conducted by the White House Counsel on Environmental Quality reported that " . . . a majority of the respondents endorsed new secure, regularly inspected facilities but only if located over 100 miles from their home." In 1980, the EPA published "Hazardous Waste Generation and Commercial Hazardous Waste Management Capacity, An Assessment," SW894, December 1980. This document stated " . . . in 1981, most areas of the country will have sufficient offsite capacity to manage hazardous waste, but some areas are likely to face shortages . . .". It went on to say " . . . demand for offsite capacity is difficult to estimate because it will depend on government regulatory activities and the industry's response to the regulations." States responded to this potential shortage of hazardous waste disposal capacity for their industries by implementing strategies to hopefully assure sufficient capacity. A 1982 Texas Report "Siting of Hazardous Waste Disposal Studies in Texas" noted that " . . . other states facing the same problems of increasing waste, public opposition, and administrative fragmentation, have reacted in different ways. Twenty-one have passed special siting legislation that gives them additional control over the siting process. Although each law is different, we can distinguish three dimensions among which states can make policy choices, state initiative, local power, and public participation." The report went on to show that fourteen states had chosen to establish separate siting boards, as the first step in taking control of the siting process. One result of the potential capacity shortage was for waste management firms to try to secure more disposal capacity. The waste management industry was in an explosive growth period with revenues that had increased four to five times in the 1971-1980 period (reference EPA SW-894 dated December 1980). Terminology Waste, by its very nature, is not a uniform product and as such the terminology dealing with waste has always had to deal with its non-uniform nature. Over the past 28+ years, the terminology used in the waste management community has come from a wide variety of governmental, regulatory and environmental entities such as cities, counties, agencies, boards, authorities, associations, districts, councils, State and Federal agencies, etc. This diverse community of waste management stakeholders across the U.S. has used a multitude of terms describing the various facets of waste management in their laws, regulations, rules, guidance documents, etc. Some examples include: | ||
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| In many cases, there were and still are different systems and protocols relating to a single word or term. For example, the EPA published a document in 1975 called "A Summary of Hazardous Substance Classification Systems," which described the 23 systems that were being used primarily for regulatory purposes to define a "hazardous substance." Technology Stakeholder Response to Terminology/Technology Substantial information is available from the numerous federal agencies involved in hazardous waste management activities. One of the principal sources of technical information is the searchable database produced over the years since 1972 by the National Ground Water Association. For the cost of membership only, more than 70,000 papers, publications, and texts are searchable by key words. The
URL to this service, as well as other Internet and World Wide Web sources of technical information, are presented above and in the Institute of Environmental Technology's Resources Page. Victor R, Johnson, Jr., P.E. |